According to recent press reports, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered the Justice Department to review fourteen Consent Decrees from the Obama Justice Department to certain local police departments.

The Obama Administration took full advantage of incidents such as Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore, Maryland, and the Black Lives Matter riots, to forcibly handcuff the policies of many police departments nationwide. President Obama essentially extorted cities and towns by saying in essence; “If you want to continue getting federal money, you have to sign and abide by the DOJ’s consent decree.”

The purpose of the Obama DOJ Consent Decrees was to tag police departments as being racist to minority residents and to restrict policing in minority neighborhoods, where proportionately, a majority of crimes occur. In other words, Obama and his DOJ ordered police departments to back-off in minority neighborhoods or risk losing federal funds to their departments.

A just-released poll of Los Angeles residents found that 55 percent of respondents indicated their greatest concern was “traffic and congestion,” far ahead of “personal safety” — the next highest area of concern — at 35 percent. So if their city government was working in their best interests, it would be doing something about automobile congestion.

Driving Saves Time and Offers More Opportunity

Such an effort to ration driving by worsening gridlock purgatory begs asking a central, but largely ignored, question. Why do planners’ attempts to force residents into walking, cycling, and mass transit — supposedly improving their quality of life — attract so few away from driving?

Since the first federal minimum wage went into effect in 1938, there have been people calling for an increase. Recently, there has been a push for a $15 hourly minimum wage at the federal level, as well as within various state and municipalities. Many of these calls for minimum wage hike have been led by, and funded by, unions. One in particular, Raise the Wage, called for a $15.25 minimum wage in Los Angeles and was funded by unions, including AFL-CIO.

While unions have been fighting for increasing minimum wages, they have also been fighting for unions to be exempted from the increased minimum wages. Rusty Hicks, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, argued why union members should be exempt from minimum wage requirements.